Another historic-era epic movie, 10000 BC had the chance to at least do well as an entertaining film on the scale of other action movies by the same director. This Roland Emmerich-directed film (maker of The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day, and The Patriot) has the correct formula for this type of movie, but its makers failed to mix the ingredients together in any kind of coherent way, with way too much of some elements, and far too little of others. The result is a movie that fails to draw in the viewer at the beginning and as a result, can’t hold their attention span for the rest.
On the positive side, the cinematography in the film is beautiful. On one hand, much of the scenery and the shots look like blatant copies of Lord of the Rings, but sometimes that’s not entirely a bad thing, if it’s stunning shots as it is in this film. Perhaps they would have made even more of an impact on the big screen.
The special and visual effects departments seem to be the places where Emmerich directed an overwhelming portion of his substantial budget. With no big-name actors in the film, the creators spent a lot of time, money and effort recreating this historic world, complete with a bird-like dinosaur and a herd of woolly mammoths, both of which were constructed with a lot of attention to detail.The money could’ve been better spent on re-writes to the script, but those effects teams worked hard.
The attempts to capitalize on what’s worked for successful epic films like Lord of the Rings appear throughout the movie as well, such as a band of brothers trekking over the harsh mountains to destroy the evil that’s overtaken the ancient world. Braveheart is also conjured in one of the pre-fight scenes in which I expected the male lead (Steven Strait) to yell “They can take our lives, but they will never take our FREEDOM!” in his prehistoric (which to these filmmakers, apparently means British) accent.
The male characters in the film, who comprise the large majority of the cast, look far too similar in their Geico cavemen-style dreadlocks and attire. Their hair and clothes don’t differ from each other enough to help the viewer form associations, and this confusion continues throughout the movie. The story also doesn’t establish any kind of loyalty or backstory to the characters at the beginning, which is one of its major flaws. The basic question of “why should we care?” is never answered—it feels as though it’s meant to be implied, and the pack of cavemen take off on a hunt, then a battle, without the audience even understanding the world, the social group of the people, and most importantly, why the relationship between the two lead characters (female lead is played by the beautiful Camilla Belle) is worth sparking a dangerous trek to retrieve her after her kidnapping (other than the fact that this is what the hero does). Again, this is not enough to make us care.
The sound mixing was not optimized for home viewing. It almost required volume to be turned up during dialogue scenes and down during fight scenes, so big was the discrepancy. It wasn’t helped any by the intrusive, grandfatherly narrator who seemed like an add-in to piece together the scenes that did make it to the editing room.
Special features could be a redeeming quality of such an effects-heavy movie for the budding filmmaker, but here again the DVD falls short. Only the run-of-the-mill deleted scenes and an alternate ending are included.
10000 BC tries to be an epic film but falls fall short of its mark. Emmerich has created some period-specific and modern blockbusters, so perhaps next time, his aim will be better.
